Gatehouse E02: Split Dimensions
by thejollydoctor
Summary: Jenny and Roland travel through the time window and get separated by temporal disruption. Roland, desperate to get back to the Gatehouse, is relieved when a man called the Doctor says he can help. Meanwhile, Jenny lands in 21st century Cardiff and discovers the secret organization 'Torchwood'.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue:**

Jenny left the kitchen and walked into the laboratory where Roland was standing by the IRCM. "Quite a nice setup we have here," she said. "You did a fine job." She looked at the module's screen and noticed that Roland had been in the middle of setting coordinates.

Roland smiled. "Thanks. Now that it's done we should do a test run." He pointed at the screen with his thumb. "Where do you want to go?"

Jenny glanced down at her arm and saw that the numbers she had written two days before were still visible. She was curious about the disappearing man and wanted to go back and find him.

"There's an unsolved mystery waiting for us," she said. She held out her arm for Roland to see. "These are the coordinates."

"Twelve, twenty, two-thousand six, A..." Roland mumbled the coordinates as he entered them, checking Jenny's arm to be sure he got them right. He pressed the activation button on the module and turned to look at the time window. The purplish vortex appeared and spun with a dizzying velocity. "Might I ask what the mystery is?"

"A vanishing man," Jenny replied as she stepped into the shuttle. She sat down in the cockpit and waited until Roland was in the back seat before switching on the controls.

"It's a bit small in here," Roland commented. "Will it take long to get through the portal?"

"Only a few minutes at most." Jenny changed the settings on the control panel and put the shuttle in gear. "You may want to hang on to something. There aren't any seat belts," she warned.

The shuttle lifted slowly from the floor and eased its way through the time window. The shuttle wasn't much smaller than the frame so Jenny had to take it easy. Once she was inside the portal she picked up the speed. Somehow the vortex seemed to be spinning slower around them, and a bright light flashed through the shuttle.

"That didn't happen before," Jenny thought as she gritted her teeth. "Is it the shuttle that's causing it?"

Roland gave a shout behind her and she tried to look over her shoulder at him. She couldn't see him. Had he hurt himself? Perhaps he hit his head and fell to the floor.

"Roland, are you okay back there?" Jenny asked.

No reply.

The shuttle flew through the other end of the portal and landed on the roof of a nearby building. People on the streets below looked up at it, gasping. Jenny turned off the thrusters and looked behind her. Roland wasn't there.

"Where could he have gone?"

**Chapter One:**

Roland woke up to see an unfamiliar person leaning over him. It was a relatively young-looking man, probably in his early thirties at most, wearing an old-fashioned cricket jumper underneath a long coat with celery pinned on the lapel. The man had a concerned expression on his face and was clutching a panama hat in his hands.

"Are you all right?" he asked. He studied Roland's face for signs of trauma. "You seem to have come from out of nowhere."

"I'm- I think I'm fine... not entirely sure," Roland sat up slowly and rubbed the top of his head. "Where am I?"

"You're in a pasture somewhere outside of London. It's also the 16th of June, 1983, which I suspect is not the time you came from." The stranger put on his hat and helped Roland to his feet. "Not to worry, though," he continued. "I'm the Doctor and I can help you get home."

"That might not be necessary. Have you seen a space shuttle nearby? I was traveling through the vortex with a friend..." Roland trailed off as he observed his surroundings. Nothing could be seen for miles except grass and a blue box up on a hill. There was no space shuttle- not even wreckage.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "The only spacecraft nearby is my Tardis. There must have been some time distortion in the vortex that separated you from your friend. Can I drop you off anywhere?"

Roland's heart sank. Jenny was alone- possibly in another dimension- and he couldn't be sure that she had a way of getting home. What if she had been separated from the shuttle, too?

He pulled himself together and looked the Doctor in the eyes. "Yes, there is," he replied. "It's called the Gatehouse. I memorized the coordinates before we left. Will that help?"

"Absolutely!" The Doctor's pitying frown transformed into a grin as he clapped Roland on the shoulder. "If you'll just follow me to the Tardis, my companion and I can take you there."

The Doctor approached the blue box that Roland had noticed before. It didn't look large enough to fit two people, let alone three.

"I hope his 'companion' is microbot," Roland thought. He stepped inside the box and froze. It was _bigger_ on the inside.

"How...?" Roland stammered. He turned around to look at the door behind him. _It _was even a little larger than on the outside. The walls and the backside of the doors were made of a thick, white material with roundels.

He turned around again to scan the rest of the room. Just in front of him was a round console with all sorts of levers, lights, and mechanisms. The Doctor pulled one of the levers and the door shut behind them.

Just then Roland noticed another door on the other side of the room opening. A young woman with curly brown hair and an unusual burgundy outfit came in. Her eyes widened when she saw Roland, but she seemed to relax when she saw that the Doctor was smiling as he adjusted the controls.

"Who are you?" she asked Roland.

"_Nyssa_..." the Doctor muttered.

Evidently the girl had a habit of being accidentally rude. Roland showed a sliver of a smile to indicate that he didn't mind.

"I mean, 'How do you do?'" she corrected herself. "My name is Nyssa. What's yours?"

"Roland. It's nice to meet you," he replied. "Can you explain to me how you've obtained a dimensionally transcendental vessel in a time period with limited technology?"

"Oh dear," Nyssa sighed. "I can see why the Doctor has taken you under his wing so quickly."

"To put it simply, we're not from this time zone, and neither is this ship," The Doctor said, in answer to Roland's question. "This ship is a time machine, and that's how we're going to get you home." He flashed a grin and resumed his work at the console.

"It might take him a while to get everything ready, so go ahead and make yourself comfortable," Nyssa said.

Roland looked around the room, but there were no chairs or benches of any kind. The only furnishings aside from the console were a hat rack and a large built-in screen. He eventually found a place on the wall that he could lean against without a roundel sticking into his back.

"This'll be fun," he said facetiously.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: **

Outside the shuttle Jenny could hear sirens coming down the street. Someone in the crowd had notified the police about the spacecraft, and they were coming to investigate. Jenny took one more glance around the shuttle to be sure that Roland wasn't there, and noticed that he had left his leather jacket draped over the seat. She grabbed it and put it on, knowing that she'd need something to protect her from the December night air. "Hopefully it's not cold wherever Roland ended up," she thought as she stepped out of the shuttle.

She walked to the edge of the rooftop and peered over the short wall. The police had managed to drive past the civilians and block off the portal. A team of them were now setting up 'crime scene' tape around it.

"How do I get out of this one?" she grumbled to herself. "I should've known spaceships were rare in this time period!"

She turned and examined her surroundings. Behind her was a stairwell entry that led down through the building. If she went out the back door of the building there might be an alley she could follow. She glanced back at the city before plunging into the dark stairway.

When Jenny reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs she saw that she was alone in the building. A large clock hung above a door to right. As she passed by she saw that it was half-past six in the evening. Presumably she was in some kind of office that was now closed.

It seemed a bit creepy, walking around an empty building at night. The next room she came to proved that she was indeed in an office. Stark-white cubicles formed a maze around her, and she shuddered as she passed each desk. It was slowly occurring to her that she was in an ancient, alien civilization. All of the people she saw on the streets outside were dead by the time she was born, and these walls would be disintegrated.

"Mind you," she thought. "They're already deteriorating a bit and- _good grief!_ Is that what they call a computer?"

She snapped out of her gloomy state, distracted by a noise outside, and went to look out a nearby window. Some of the police officers were trying to forcibly enter the building, undoubtedly wanting to get to the rooftop to pry their way into the shuttle. "Good luck with that," Jenny thought. Their technology was far too primitive to breach her spacecraft.

Quickly, she located the exit and found that it could easily be unlocked from the inside. She slipped into the crowds and breathed a sigh of relief when nobody seemed to notice her. Once again she tried not to think about all the strangers around her who would be dead centuries before her time. "_My_ time? No. I don't have a time- and I certainly don't belong to one- not anymore. I belong to nothing. Not even this universe if I don't want to."

Her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar shadow. In front of her was the same man she had seen on her last visit- the one that had vanished. He was walking at a fast pace away from her, towards the spot where he had disappeared before. Jenny walked faster, keeping a sharp eye on him. She wouldn't let him get away this time, even if it meant stirring up the civilians and causing a riot.

Fortunately, it wouldn't come to that. He reached the spot where he went before and stood perfectly still. A woman who had been looking at him quizzically before now took no notice of him, as if something had erased him from her memory. At the same time, Jenny's vision started to blur ever so slightly. It dawned on her that he was using a perception filter, and she strained her mind to focus on him.

The perception field snapped as the place where he was standing lowered into the ground. That square of the sidewalk was some kind of secret lift, leading into who-knows-where, and Jenny jumped nearer as he went out of view. Deep beneath the pavement, in a large and cluttered room, the lift stopped, and the man stepped off. Jenny counted to ten and jumped onto the platform as it started to come back up. She didn't care about being caught- she just wanted to solve this mystery.

She held back a cry as she hit the concrete and rolled onto the floor. It was further down than she thought and her landing wasn't as graceful as it could've been. She stood up slowly and rubbed the back of her neck, wincing. There would be a **big** bruise there later.

"Hello," a deep voice said. It had an unusual tone, that was both cordial and questioning. "Who might you be?"

Jenny looked up and saw that the man she had been trailing was now staring directly at her, with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. Naturally, she knew she'd be caught as soon as she jumped through the lift, but she hadn't expected it to be so... uncomfortable. His gaze seemed to see right through her, knowing her every intention, but she couldn't tell a thing about him. His very existence was unsettling.

"Jenny," she finally replied. It came out sharp and cold, like she was lashing at him with a knife. She was reminded of her own knife, and felt her belt to be sure it was there.

"Jenny," he repeated. "A very simple name for an extremely complicated girl. Then again, I suppose that's the way with the world. I'm Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood. Welcome to our headquarters."

Jack stepped forward, hiding something behind his back. When he saw that Jenny had taken her knife from her belt, he smiled and placed the object on a desk beside them. It was a high-pressure sealed jar containing a human-looking hand, perfectly preserved by bubbling liquid.

"What is that?" Jenny asked, concerned.

"That, _Jenny_, is an alien hand," Jack replied, "which happens to be causing the liquid substance around it to bubble. It doesn't normally do that. It only started when you fell through our back door." He gestured to the lift. "Who are you, really? And don't try to lie; I'll be able to tell."

Jenny put her knife back into her belt and crossed her arms. Jack, eh? A shallow name for a shallow man. The only reason he was tolerating her presence was because she didn't make sense to him. Once he figured her out he'd kill her, wipe her memory, or rudely escort her off the premises. If, that is, he didn't dissect her beforehand.

"Is that a neurostatic fibrillator?" Jenny asked, changing the subject. She gestured to a nearby object and stepped in for a closer look. Perhaps if she acted like a normal, curious girl he'd lose interest in her history.

"It's a _geothermal_ neurostatic fibrillator," Jack corrected. He crossed his arms with a smirk and looked over her shoulder. "But you shouldn't know what that is."

"Geothermal? You have a neurostatic fibrillator powered by planetary heat and you think _I'm_ unusual? This shouldn't exist yet!"

Jack realized she had a point and let out an exasperated sigh. Normally he'd assume she was a Time Agent or something of the like, but the Doctor's hand had reacted to her presence. Who was she and why was she here? Once he found out the answer she would be free to leave, but until then he wasn't going to let her out of his sight.

"Fine, you don't have to tell me who you are, but since you're on government property, you'll have to tell me why you're here."

"You mean you don't know already? I saw you disappear this morning and I was curious how you did it. It's some kind of perception filter isn't it?"

"Something like that. It's a rare side effect of a damaged chameleon circuit," Jack explained.

"A _what_?" Jenny raised an eyebrow, which caused Jack to raise both of his. When she did that she looked like...

"Jenny, are you human?" he asked, his voice flat to hide emotion.

Jenny looked away from the neurostatic fibrillator. That was certainly an unexpected change of subject.

"What else would I be?" she replied. Once again she reached for her knife, in case he decided experimentation was the best way to investigate.

"Oh, I don't know," Jack said casually, leaning against the desk. "Perhaps a Time Lord?"

Jenny's mouth gaped open. She was about to admit to it and ask how he knew, when an explosive crash echoed through the Hub, drawing their attention.

"Oh, no." Jack gasped. "That's the _Rift_!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three:**

The Doctor entered the coordinates to the Gatehouse as Roland recited them. The central column of the Tardis console bobbed up and down as the ship dematerialized and began making a terrible grinding noise. Roland covered his ears, and was quite surprised to see that the Doctor and Nyssa were not bothered by it at all.

"Does it always do that?" he asked, his ears still covered.

"Yes," Nyssa replied with a sigh. "Although I don't think it's supposed to."

The Doctor huffed and looked up from the controls. "It's perfectly normal, I assure you. The Tardis has always made this sound. You won't have to listen to it much longer, Roland; we're nearly to this 'Gatehouse' of yours."

The noise stopped with a metallic 'thud' and the console stood still. The Doctor flipped a switch and the thin cover over the mounted screen lifted to reveal the scenery outdoors.

"That can't be right," he frowned. "You don't live on a desert planet do you, Roland?"

Roland groaned. The scanner showed a dusty valley with orange soil and a yellow sky above it. Part of the valley had been cut into a small canyon by a series of floods centuries before, but no sign of water remained now.

"Oh well, we'll just try again. The Tardis must have been unable to process your coordinates," the Doctor offered.

"Hold on!" Nyssa interrupted. She squinted at the screen and then pointed at a smudge across the canyon. "That looks like a village," she said. "Perhaps the Tardis took us here for a reason. Shouldn't we take a look?"

The Doctor turned and opened the Tardis doors to get a better view of the 'village'. Roland let out a sigh, knowing there was a large chance he wouldn't make it home that day, and all because Nyssa decided the time ship was sentient. It wasn't really, was it?

"That does look like a settlement," the Doctor agreed. "but I'd say it's more of a military base than a village." He ran to take a peek out the door, with Nyssa and Roland following close behind.

"You don't suppose there's a war on, do you?" Roland asked. "The base looks a bit tattered, but... still equipped, like it's seen action recently."

"Could be. Let's have a look."

The Doctor locked the Tardis doors behind them and they began their descent into the valley. The slopes were surprisingly steep, Roland thought, and the rocks around them looked as if they had been half-eaten by a colossal beast. He briefly wondered what could have caused this formation before marching on behind Nyssa and the Doctor.

"Are you certain walking straight towards a military base is a good idea?" Roland questioned. "They might think we're enemies and shoot at us."

"No, we're not their enemies, and I think they'll know that," the Doctor insisted. "This is a human colony facing terrestrial attack."

"You mean, like the opposite of an alien invasion?" Roland squinted his eyes, looking around for something that could have given such information away. He saw nothing. "How can you be so sure?"

They were now mere yards away from the gate, and a sentryman shouted from a watchtower above them. Roland fidgeted, wanting to run away, but the Doctor assured him the guard was only alerting the commander.

"Besides, I told you, we're not their enemies. They won't shoot at us." He knocked on the gate and gestured to the corroding walls. "Do you see that? That's the same corrosion pattern as the rocks around us. It's caused by acid."

"Acid? Their enemies are fighting with acid?" Nyssa asked. "That's certainly an unusual type of warfare."

"No, not fighting with it. Their enemies _are _acid," the Doctor corrected. Two soldiers opened the gate as he explained. "They're Enkavans."

A stern-looking woman stepped through the gateway and pointed a large gun at the Doctor's head. "Who are you and what do you know of the creatures?" she demanded.

"Ah." The Doctor raised his hands in surrender and glanced at Roland, who was glaring back at him. "You must be the person in charge."

"Commander Koldoff."

"Pleasure to meet you, Commander Koldoff. I'm the Doctor." He lowered his arm to shake hands with the commander, but raised it again when she glared at it. "My friends and I were just passing by and noticed your base was recently attacked. We saw traces of acid corrosion and assumed it was the Enkavans. We thought we might be able to help."

The commander eyed the newcomers suspiciously before ordering the soldiers at the gate to search them for weapons. When none were found, she gestured for the Doctor and his companions to follow her into the base.

"You must be new to this planet if you don't carry weapons," she said, leading them through the grounds. "And yet you seem to know a great deal about the Enkavans. Why is that?"

"Well, I'm a space traveler," the Doctor began. "I've been traveling for some time now, and I have a lot of experience with interplanetary creatures. The Enkavans are one of many creatures I have encountered before."

"And your friends? Have they encountered the Enkavans before?"

"Well, no-"

"Then they are of no use on this base," the Commander interrupted. She turned to a nearby soldier. "Take these two to the bunker. Have an armed guard watch them."

"That really won't be-"

Commander Koldoff turned and shouted menacingly at the Doctor. "This is a fully functional military settlement. We cannot have useless civilians wandering about the grounds. You were permitted to enter for two reasons only: you have information on the Enkavans, and we don't want three more bodies to bury."

By this time Roland was staring up the barrel of the soldier's space gun, and Nyssa was squeezing the life out of his left hand. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but Nyssa and I might still be able to help the Doctor with his equipment."

Koldoff faced him and gestured for the soldier to lower his gun. "You may assist the Doctor on one condition: you have two or more armed soldiers with you at all times." She looked at the Doctor. "Are we agreed?"


End file.
